In the field of large scale production of battered and breaded food products, one frequent problem is the formation of bare spots on the under side of generally flat food shapes such as sawed frozen fish portions, meat patties, and the like. Conveying means through the batter applicator usually consists of an open mesh wire conveyor belt which receives the spaced and oriented product pieces from a feed conveyor, conveys them slightly downward into a shallow batter-filled pan for bottom coating and under a falling curtain of batter for top coating, then conveys them out of the pan and under an air curtain for excess batter removal before discharging them to the breading machine, after which the belt returns under the shallow pan to the feed area. Most such batters are of such low viscosity that little is adhering to the wires of the belt when the product is first received. Then, when the belt dips into the shallow pan, occasional air bubbles are trapped by the wires against the under side of the product, are carried with the product through the shallow pan, and prevent the batter from wetting the bubble area. When the product is not battered, it will not pick up breading in the breading machine, and the resulting bare spot causes the piece to be rejected by quality control inspectors. In some cases, bare spots cause the rejection of thousands of pieces per day, to be reworked or to be packed as lower grade.
The present invention practically eliminates the problem described above by preventing the formation and trapping of air bubbles, hence the formation of bare spots. The feed area of the open mesh wire conveyor belt, both product advancing run and return run, is utilized to form a sheet or layer of batter in the product receiving area of the belt, the sheet actually extending from the surface of a conveyor slide plate to slightly above the level of the conveyor wires. Thus, when the product transfers from the product feed conveyor to the batter applicator fitted with this invention, the product first touches batter before touching conveyor wires, and as the product feeds on to the batter applicator conveyor, the continual formation of the batter sheet under the product insures that the entire under surface is wetted with batter while all the bubbles are expelled.
It may be noted that some batter applicators, called in the trade "tempura", afford a wet surface for receiving the product. In this case, the tempura batter is of such high viscosity that the return run of the applicator belt drags a continuous sheet of tempura material out of a lower storage hopper and around a belt pulley to a belt slide plate. The present invention is not necessary in such cases, but the tempura batter applicator will not form the wet receiving surface if used with the low viscosity batters which are used with the present invention. The present invention thus serves a different need than does the tempura applicator.
It may be also noted that bottom surface coverage could be obtained by dropping the product pieces edgewise into a pool of batter, onto a fully submerged conveyor, then arranging the product carrying run of the conveyor to lift the product out of the pool for excess batter removal and discharge to further processing. The objection to this method is the probability of severe product disorientation, so that the product pieces are touching or even overlapping when removed from the pool. Such disorientation will result in no breading application on areas where pieces touch each other, which is little better than the originally discussed problem. The present invention maintains essentially the same product orientation in the batter applicator as that in the feed conveyor to the applicator.